THE DEATH OF King Charles I. Proved a Down-right MURDER With the Aggravations of it IN A SERMON AT St. Botolph Aldgate LONDON January 30. 1692 3. To which are Added some Just Reflections upon some late Papers concerning That King's Book By RICH. HOLLINGWORTH D.D. LONDON Printed by R. Norton for Walter Kettilby at the Bishop's Head in St. Paul's Church-Yard 1693. To the INHABITANTS Of St. Botolph Aldgate LONDON Who are true Lovers of Old England indeed My good Friends and Parishioners THere is a certain bold Libeller who has been pleased under the Name of Ludlow a Regicide to load me with a great many reproaches and false Stories in several lewd Pamphlets in order to prejudice you against my Person and thereby to hinder the success of my Ministry amongst you which thanks be to God has had very little effect as yet and I hope never will for I must say thus much that I have found the Love and Respects of abundance of You rather encrease than diminish ever since I undertook the honest and just Defence of King Charles the First into my hands but however that You may not repent of standing by me in this good Cause I think it very necessary to take this occasion to defend my self against an Imputation of this bad Man's to wit of Forgery a Sin of which if I thought or knew my self guilty I should Blush nay Tremble ever to come into a Pulpit to Preach the Doctrines of the Gospel either to You or any other persons whatsoever and therefore I shall with all freedom and unreservedness let You into the Knowledge of this thing which he calls Forgery Being the last Summer at my Lord Bishop of London's I accidentally met with the Reverend Mr. Lamplugh Son to the late Archbishop of York who was pleased knowing that I was engaged in the Cause of King Charles the First to shew me Mr. Henderson's Death-bed Declaration which he found in his Father's study and upon my request to lend it me which after I had read and found so very Honest so plain and hearty a Character and so agreeable to what by an uninterrupted Tradition had been delivered down to us of this Age both by English and Scotchmen namely that Mr. Henderson after a thorow acquaintance and conversation with King Charles the First at Newcastle went away perfectly changed as to his Opinion of that King's Sanctity Learning and profound Judgment and with great grief that he had been instrumental to the Miseries that Good Man was brought to at that time I say it being so agreeable to what was so generally said of Mr. Henderson I after I had shewed it to many Persons of great Character and Consideration in Our Church and by them encouraged to make it more publick resolved to Re-print it that the World might see how much that Great and Good Man was abused by this Libeller who so impudently brands him with the Name of Nimrod Pharaoh and unaccountable Tyrant which Character as it wonderfully pleased all that wish well to our English Monarchy so it had the contrary effect upon our Commonwealths men and therefore in half a Years time this Scribler makes a shift to get Two pretended Papers to Prove this a Forgery The First is as he tells you a Letter from a grave and worthy Gentleman who lived in Scotland about that time and was very conversant in the great Affairs of that Kingdom And what says this grave and knowing Gentleman to this affair why he tells him he never heard of this Declaration neither there nor here and that had it been true to wit that there was such a one the World would have been full of it Strange that this Man so conversant in the great Affairs of Scotland at that time should not hear of a Declaration of the General Assembly as to the Falshood and Forgery of that Book and therefore this very thing must make any Man not prejudiced call in question the Truth of the Assemblies Declaration especially considering this bold Man puts it out without any attestation from any Publick Notary or any other Creditable Witnesses whom he might have employed to search the Records and therefore I believe upon this account the World will lay the Forgery at his Door and not at mine especially when I tell him this Story that I have from a great and undoubted hand That Mr. Henderson when he came from Newcastle to Edinburgh did design to unbosome himself in the great Church at Edinburgh as to the Vertues of that great King and the Reasons of the Change of his Opinion of Him which was understood by some great Leaders in the Assembly and therefore they hindred his Preaching after which he fell Sick and Dyed and no doubt to unburthen and ease his Mind drew up in this Declaration what he intended to Preach had he been permitted And now I think my Good Neighbours You will say I have sufficiently defended my self from the base Imputation of a Forgerer The other things I shall trouble you with the account of are some Papers said lately to be found which plainly as they say make it out that King Charles I. was not the Author of that Book which for forty odd Years has gone in his Name These Papers by the kindness of the Gentleman in whose hands they are I have examined twice and I am very sorry for Dr. Gauden's Memory sake that they have been so much exposed because in my Remarks upon them some things must fall very hard upon that Prelate which I should be very averse to was not the Name Honour Religion and Learning of King Charles concerned which I hope will excuse me amongst all Men that understand the difference of Persons especially of a King and a Subject The first Paper I shall take notice of is a Petition to the King for the Bishoprick of Winchester which indeed for his Memory's sake ought by no means to have been exposed to view it is so Romantick so childishly cracking and boasting of his Heroick and Secret Service that a Man would think the poor Man had utterly forgot and lost all the impressions of common Policy and Prudence and was resolved to provoke the King to command him out of White-Hall as a Man not fit to be a Countrey Curate much less preferred to the wealthiest Bishoprick in England But the best of it is though he had the vanity to draw it up he was yet so wise as not to present it which is plain from his own mouth for Page 5 of Dr. Walker we have this Story That the last time Dr. Walker saw him which was after he was Lord Bishop of Worcester Elect he asked him whether King Charles II. knew that he wrote the Book He gave him this answer That I cannot positively and certainly say he doth because he was never pleased to take express notice of it to me The truth of it is when I consider that Dr. Walker says That Dr. Gauden took the
were brought to his Father by the King's Order by Bishop Juxon for that purpose or weigh down the credit of that holy honest and couragious Sufferer Mr. Simmonds All which Characters will appear in a few Weeks to be true of him by his Book called The Vindication of King Charles the First which was Printed in 48. and now Re-printed again by my self who all along in his Sickness and to his last Breath declared it to be the King 's own Book and none others whose only fault was in the trust reposed in him by the King to Print and Correct this Book that he showed it to Dr. Gauden and let him too much into the knowledge of it who thereupon Mr. Simmonds being dead and the Marquess of Worcester too who if living could have disproved to his shame all his Pretences in order to serve his ambitious ends sets up for the Author of the Book Or lastly weigh down the Evidence of the Reverend Mr. Long who so sacredly has declared that he heard Dr. Gauden declare and often affirm that he was fully convinced that the Book was entirely that King's Work I now my good Friends appeal to you all to judge betwixt these so much cryed-up Papers and the Evidence against them for that great and good King and I leave my self in your hands and the hands of all the dis-interested and unprejudiced part of the Kingdom to judge whether I am guilty of Forgery that great sin a late Barbarous Libeller lays to my charge I shall detain you no longer than to tell you That the reason of my Zeal and Labour in the Vindication of this King next to my satisfaction in his Personal Vertues it that the Principles by which this King was Murdered and by which his Murder is now justified will if they prevail once more destroy our English Ancient Monarchy and tear up by the Roots again the best constituted Church in the World and by the Grace of God as I will never contribute to such a Design so according to my small Ability I will in my place endeavour to prevent it let what will come of Me and Mine My good Neighbours praying for your Health and Happiness and thanking of you for your continued kindness to me I am your hearty loving Friend and Minister RICH. HOLLINGWORTH TO THE Counterfeit LUDLOW SIR WHereas you challenge me as to the Truth of the Story concerning Mrs. Gauden to a Lady if you please to come or send to me I will direct you to that Reverend Person who will satisfie you that a Lady told him above sixteen years ago that Mrs. Gauden told her That she questioned the Eternal State of her Husband because he pretended to be the Author of a Book which to her knowledge he never wrote And when you know him you will say I am not out when I say He is as considerable a Person as most that wears a Gown Imprimatur Guil. Lancaster Good Reader YEsterday being the 15th of February a very Worthy and particular Friend of mine was pleased to come to my house and to inform me That one Captain Rhodes together with his Mother could give me a farther account of King Charles the First 's Book upon which I gave the said Captain a meeting the last Night who was pleased to invite me to his House this afternoon being the 16th instant where and when the Mother a grave serious Gentlewoman did declare to me that her Husband Dr. Rhodes Minister of Haughton and Thorpe near Newark did live in Newark in the time it was a Garison while the King was there and that the King came often to her House to discourse with her Husband and that her Husband did conduct the King in a disguise from Newark to Oxford and was with him often from that time till his being a Prisoner in the Isle of Wight where he attended him also in all which places he saw those parts of the King's Book which he then drew up Written with his own hand being so intimate with the King and so intirely beloved by him as to be admitted into his Closets and secret Communications all which her Husband often told her as great Truths and the said Captain her Son did declare to me which he will when lawfully called restifie upon Oath that he was in company with Sir Francis Leake and one Major Millington a Sectary and his Father when a discourse arising about this Book his Father solemnly laid his Hand upon his Breast and said upon the Word of an Honest Man I have at several times and in several places seen and read these Papers Writ with the King 's own hand This Captain Rhodes and his Mother live in Mansel-street in Goodman's Fields within two doors of the Green Man and will justifie the Truth of what I have said to any that have the curiosity to ask them And now Mr. Ben. Hatley who against Faith and Promise exposed these false and ridiculous Papers to publick View at the Rummer in Queen-street and suffered a silly abstract to be taken by the Counterfeit Ludlow much good may your Design do you though I assure you Dr. Gauden's Relations have no reason to thank you MATTHEW XIX 18. Jesus said Thou shalt do no Murder WHEN God Created Man He designed that his Issue and Posterity should live in Love and Peace with one another mutually Helping and Assisting each other according to their several Necessities and Straits and therefore when Cain rose up against his Brother Abel and embrued his Hands in his Bloud the great God to shew his abhorrence and detestation of the Sin tells him that the Voice of his Brother's Bloud was come to Him from the ground and in Judgment makes him a Vagabond and a Wanderer and afterwards makes a standing Law in order to deterr Men from a Sin that did so break in upon the Reason of his Creation and the Laws of Society That whosoever did shed Man's Bloud by Man should his Bloud be shed And when He gave the Ten Commandments by the hands of Moses to the Children of Israel He inserted this for one Exod. 20. That he should not kill And our Saviour who came to fulfil all Righteousness and as He tells us himself Matth. 5. Not to destroy but to fulfil the Law namely To set things in a clearer Light to found the Practice of them upon Nobler Principles to carry them to Nobler Ends and to give Men greater Spiritual Aids and Assistances to perform them than the Jews had under the Paedagogy of Moses He repeats and justifies this particular Law making the observance of it one of the conditions of Eternal Life and tells the Man in the words of my Text Thou shalt do no Murder In the handling of which Words I will briefly fix the true Notion of Murder of Killing our fellow Creatures those of the same Rank and Order of Being with our selves and then see whether the Murder we are appointed by the Wisdom of the
Covenant and that when Mr. Zach. Crofton charges Dr. Gauden as one of the number of Covenanters And Dr. Gauden denies all Page 275. of Anti-Baal and says That Mr. Crofton reckons without his Host when he made him one of the number of Covenanters and positively assures the World that he never took any Oaths but those appointed by Law no League nor Vow and that if he had done it he must have had no peace 'till he had publickly repented and recanted such Dissimulation which he abhors as Hell I say when I read this I wonder at nay I believe nothing that Dr. Gauden either said or did in order to get a fat Bishoprick but before I leave this Paper give me leave to say that the Style is so like to all his other Writings and so altogether unlike the King's Book that I will as soon believe that Mr. Ralph Venning who Writ two Books called Milk and Honey and Orthodox Paradoxes or that Mr. William Seckar who Writ the fulsom Sermon called the Wedding Ring could have Writ the Whole Duty of Man or Mr. Baxter's Saints Everlasting Rest as that Dr. Gauden could Write the Eicon The next Paper is a Letter to my Lord Chancellour Hide still for the Bishoprick of Winchester And the Truth of it is here he displays himself to the full and shews his Virtues all at once and how far the World ought to give credit to his pretences for he down-right offers to commit the sin of Simony and bids one half of the Bishoprick of Winchester to get the other a fit Man indeed to Write such Holy and Divine Meditations as are contained in the King's Book who rather than miss his Ambitious Aims will enter in at the door of Perjury and I am sure he that will forswear himself will not fail to tell a falsehood when Covetousness and Pride have the Ascendant of him The next and last Paper I shall take notice of is a long Narrative of Mrs. Gauden's all which depends upon her Husband's Truth and which will not hold together when it comes strictly to be examined She tells you of an intercourse betwixt King Charles the Second and Dr. Gauden about the Book and the King upon satisfaction that he wrote it promised him the Reversion of the Bishoprick of Winchester and yet as by the former Story appears the King even after he was Elect of Worcester never said word to him of any such thing She further positively asserts that her Husband sent the Manuscript to the King at the Isle of Wight and that the King received it and sent Bishop Duppa to give Dr. Gauden an account of it and yet pag. 5. of Dr. Walker he asking Dr. Gauden whether the King had ever seen the Book he gave him this Answer I know it certainly no more than you but I used my best endeavours that he might for I delivered a Copy of it to the Marquess of Hartford when he went to the Treaty at the Isle of Wight and intreated his Lordship if he could obtain any private opportunity he would deliver it to his Majesty and humbly desire to know his Majesty's pleasure concerning it But the Violence which threatned the King hastning so fast he ventured to Print it and never knew what was the issue of sending it Here is brave work my Masters Dr. Gauden by Dr. Walker down-right giving Mrs. Gauden the lye She tells you in another place that it was some few days after the King's Murder that her Husband got the Book Printed it whereas it is well known the Book was Printed off before the King's Murder But commend me to the last positive assertion of this Lady for she tells you that some of the Rump-Parliaments Friends took the very Manuscript her Husband sent to his Majesty and appointed a private Committee to find out the business This had been brave for Mr. Milton and I am sure we should have heard of it again and again in his Answer to the King's Book and no doubt that Remnant of the House that sat and were so grieved at this Book and lost so much ground throughout the Kingdom by Vertue of this Book would have sent this news all over the Nation but not one word of all this but the Book passed as it ought to do for above 12. Years together as the King 's own And so I take my leave of Mrs. Gauden but not without expressing my hearty sorrow that I am absolutely necessitated to these Remarks and Reflections upon Dr. Gauden and his Wife for I take no pleasure neither in speaking ill of nor doing ill to any Man or Woman whatsoever But it may be some will say pray why did my Lord Chancellour Hide seem to believe it I answer that he was perfectly imposed upon by Dr. Gauden and knew nothing of the matter it self for he never saw the King's face after he left Oxford being always excepted out of Pardon by the Parliament and so became wholly a stranger to the King 's private Transactions And now my good Friends and Neighbours I shall only trouble you by asking you whether those are not very credulous Men and have Throats that will swallow Mountains that make these vain contradictory Papers weigh down the evidence of Major Huntington who after Nazeby fight procured so much of the King's Book as was then drawn up from Fairfax the General and delivered the Papers with his own hand to the King who received them with great joy and told him that he esteemed them more than all the Jewels he had lost in his Cabinet which was attested to me by Mr. Cave Becke a Reverend Pious and Learned Minister now living in Ipswich from the mouth of the Major in a Letter under his own hand and also by Mr. Ric. Duke of Devon and several others in the same County to Mr. Read Archdeacon of Barnstaple who all had it from the Major himself or will weigh down the Evidence of that holy humble modest and admirable learned Man Dr. Dillingham sometimes Fellow and Master of Emanuel College in Cambridge who declared to his Son which I have formerly Printed from a Letter writ by himself to a Reverend Minister in London That his Father read in the King's Closet at Holdenby presently after he came from Newcastle several Sentences newly writ as he supposed by the King 's own hand which he afterwards found exactly in a Chapter of the King's Book the Truth of which Story has been very lately confirmed to me by the Reverend Mr. Saunderson late Fellow of Emanuel College to whom that learned Doctor did tell it more than once Or further Whether these vain and unaccountable Papers will weigh down the Evidence of Sir John Brattle lately deceased who has declared a hundred and a hundred times within this last year to my self and others That he assisted his Father in methodizing the King 's loose Papers which made up the greatest part of this Book in the Year 1647. and which
Nation This Day to bewail is not according to that Notion of Murder a real Act of Murder and not a piece of Justice as many wicked Men at this Day call it and consequently does not deserve to be abhorred and grieved for by all Men that wish well to the Kingdom and in order to it do endeavour to atone that displeasure which the Shedding and the Vindicating the shedding of Innocent Bloud may justly raise in the Divine Breast and which may provoke God still to pour down his Judgments upon us for so doing And certainly there is no good Man in the Nation but will conclude considering the Circumstances and Dangers we are in threatned by a powerful Enemy abroad and weakned so much by so great destructive Divisions at home I say there is no good Man but will conclude that we ought to do all that lyes in us to procure the Blessings and the kind and seasonable interposals of Divine Providence to secure our Armies by Land and our Forces by Sea and so to prosper them that we may be delivered from the hands of our Enemies and all that hate us our Nation and Religion And he that by Vindicating the crying Sin of Murder does contribute towards Divine Provocation he is so far from being a Friend to the Laws and Liberties of his Countrey that he is the greatest Enemy they have and ought by all Men trusted with Publick Offices either Spiritual or Secular to be both publickly instructed and with all good Temper to be reproved too that so he may be reclaimed from a Sin that hath so poysonous an influence upon the Good of the Community of which he is a Member First therefore As for the True Notion of Murder the thing forbidden in the Text In short it is nothing else but the taking away another Man's Life without a Warrant from God or Man deputed and entrusted by God in a Judicial way to bring Men to such a piece of Justice as deprives them of their Lives For it is plain from Scripture that many Mens Lives have been taken away by an immediate Command from God which justified the Act and took away the Notion and consequently the Guilt of Murder And it is as plain that there are many Acts of Wickedness that God ordered the Lawful Magistrate for the appeasing of Divine Wrath and the Good of Humane Societies to put Men to Death which Laws have had their force in all Nations and Countries whatsoever and indeed without which Humane Societies would quickly be dissolved and the World would be like nothing but a Wilderness or Desart full of Men turned into the nature of wild Bears and Tygers and where you have one violent destruction of a Fellow-Creature you would have a thousand So that the Murder of my Text is nothing else but a pretending and undertaking to be Master of another Man's Life without any Commission from God or any Legal Tryal by Men according to the Laws of the Country in which they live and to which they are bound to subject themselves So that this brings me to the work and business of this day namely to consider Whether the Death of King Charles the First was a Murder yea or no or an Act of Justice as some wicked men do still pretend to call-it Now here let us consider whether they had a Commission from God to do it Now a Commission from God must either be by a Voice from Heaven or else by the Ministry of an Angel sent by God or some other way by which God did convey His Mind and Purpose to His People of old none of which were ever pretended to as the ground and reason of this great Man's Death by any that had a hand in it And therefore let us see what Warrant they had from the Laws of the Land The Laws of the Land What are they or upon what Authority are they founded Why according to our Constitution all Laws flow from the Power of King Lords and Commons the Lords and Commons framing and preparing Bills such as they conceive for the Good of the Countrey and the King by his Royal Fiat giving Life and Being to those Bills upon which they immediately become obligatory to the People of the Land to violate or transgress which is attended with such Pains and Penalties as those Law-makers who make up the Legislative Power of the Nation think good and meet to enact and whatsoever is offered as a Law made without the concurrence of these Three Estates together is an Invasion and Encroachment upon the True and Essential Constitution of the Kingdom For neither the King without the Lords and Commons nor the Lords and Commons without the King can bind the Subject to any thing under the Notion of a Law of this Kingdom This my Beloved is our happy Frame of Government which certainly is the best the World can shew and under which we ought to sit with great delight and pleasure And they that go about to set any of these Three Powers contrary to the Law above their places are great Enemies to this excellent Constitution and their Projects and Contrivances their Arguments and Proposals have always been of very unhappy consequence to the Kingdom in general And for my own part I do here profess my self so great an Admirer of this happy Constitution that by the Grace of God my little Finger shall never be employed to make any jar in the Harmony and Concurrence of King Lords and Commons and I will always submit by doing or by suffering to whatsoever they shall Enact And though they should pass into a Law what I in Conscience could not comply withal yet I think it my duty not to Resist but to be passively Obedient which I account the true Notion of Non-Resistance and Passive-Obedience two Doctrines which if not maintained and practised in this sense I have named all Government is precarious and will be in danger of being unhinged whenever a number of discontented and ambitious Persons get together with Force and Strength in order to carry on their wicked and base designs and to answer and gratifie their unreasonable dissatisfactions Well this being the true Notion of the English Laws pray let us see whether King Lords and Commons ever consented to a Law that enabled one part to destroy the other the King to destroy and null the Being and Authority of Lords and Commons or the Lords and Commons to sit upon judge and take away the Life of their King And here I challenge the boldest Assertor of the Justice of the Murder of this Day to show me any one word from the beginning of the Statute-Book to the end thereof that looks this way or gives such a Power into any of the three parts of the Legislative Powers Hands And if there be no Commission from the Law of the Land then certainly this Death must be called and is a true and real Murder the Thing forbidden in my Text. A Law
to do it No no they could not perpetrate this Act before they had broke in upon the whole Frame and Constitution of the Government and they made their way to it by the most undutiful rude and barbarous Acts that History almost can parallel For at that very time when the good King had made such Concessions as the House of Commons Voted a ground for Peace and when the tired and harrassed Nation expected their Swords to be turned into Plow-shares and the Spears into pruning books at that time did an insolent Army through Pride Covetousness and Perjury violently assault their Masters who had set them on Work and all along paid them their Wages and stop'd and laid hold of many of the Members as they were going into the House and put them under a restraint even to such a number that very few considering of what number the House ought to consist did remain behind which Few notwithstanding took upon them the Name of the People of England and in a short time after some Votes which rooted up and destroyed the very Fundamentals of our Government Voted the Tryal of the King as a Traytor and named Commissioners to sit upon him and when they sent the Bill to the Lords for their concurrence who nobly rejected it for so doing they Voted away all the Authority of the House of Lords tho' it be by our Constitution the Highest Court of Judicature in the Kingdom By such unheard of and Barbarous Ways they made way for the King's Tryal and at last for his inhumane Death And now I appeal to any Man of Sense Reason or Religion whither this was not a real Murder and I ask with what Brow any Man that pretends a Love for his Countreys Constitution can advocate and plead for such an illegal Act an Act of a few Men who took upon them an Authority our Law knows nothing of But to put the thing out of doubt and to satisfie you to the full that this was a real Murder I will give you an Abstract of the Act made by the Parliament upon the Restoration of King Charles the Second many of the Members of which were persons excluded by the Army in order to the violent cutting off King Charles the First They declare in that Act That The horrid and execrable Murder of our late most gracious Soveraign King Charles the First of ever-blessed and glorious Memory hath been committed by a party of wretched Men desperately wicked and hardned in their impiety who-having first plotted and contrived the ruine and destruction of our excellent Monarchy and with it the True Reformed Protestant Religion which had been long protected by it and flourished under it to carry on their pernicious and traiterous designs threw down all the Fences and Bulworks of Law subverted the very Being and Constitution of Parliaments that they might have a way opened for any further attempt upon the Sacred Person of his Majesty Further they declare That by many odious Acts they had fully strengthened themselves in Power and Faction seiz'd upon his Royal Person erected a prodigious and unheard of Tribunal which they called an High Court of Justice for Tryal of his Majesty and at last with force and cruelty they brought his Sacred Majesty to the Scaffold and there publickly Murdered him before the Gates of his own Royal Palace And because by this horrid Action the Protestant Religion hath received the greatest Wound and reproach and the People of England the most unsupportable Shame and Infamy that it was possible for the enemies of God and the King to bring upon us Further it says The Fanatick rage of a few miscreants who were as far from being True Protestants as they were from being True Subjects Therefore we the Parliament do hereby renounce abominate and protest against that impious Fact that execrable Murther and unparallel'd Treason committed against the Sacred Person and Life of our said late Sovereign and all proceedings thereunto And be it hereby declared that by the undoubted and fundamental Laws of this Kingdom neither the Peers of this Realm nor the Commons nor both together in Parliament nor the People collectively nor representatively nor any other Person whatsoever ever had have or ought to have a coercive Power over the persons of the Kings of this Realm And for the vindicating our selves and as a lasting Monument to Posterity of our inexpressible detestation and abhorrence of this Villanous and Abominable Fact Be it Enacted that every 30th of January shall be for over hereafter set a part to be kept and observed in all Churches and Chappels in his Majesties Dominions as an Anniversary day of Fasting and Humiliation to implore the Mercy of God that neither the Guilt of the Sacred and Innocent Bloud may at any time hereafter be visited upon Vs and our Posterity Then it goes on to Attaint as Traitors and Regicides Oliver Cromwel Edmund Ludlow c. as notorious Wicked and Active Instruments in prosecuting and compassing that Trayterous Murder And now my Beloved I hope when the Wisdom of the Nation in Parliament has declared it self so fully and freely I say I hope there is none in this Congregation will deny this Fact to be a real and down-right Murder in the sense of my Text. Give me leave in the next place to show you the Aggravations of this Murder that so you may be affected with it and thereby answer the Reason of the Day and the design of those that appointed it and consequently help to the keeping of that Divine Vengeance which other mens justifying and abetting of it may justly pull down upon our heads And the truth of it is the Aggravations are great and many and surmount all my little Rhetorick to make a just description of but however as far as I am able I will give you them I. Consider the Aggravation from the Persons that contrived and accomplished this horrid Murder they were Men that had sworn true Faith to him again and again who had taken the Oaths of Supremacy and Allegiance who took the Protestation by which they promised to defend and secure the King 's Rights who took the Covenant by which they engaged at the same rate and to the same purposes Men that had consented to Messages upon Messages Petitions upon Petitions under the Name and Notion of His Majesty's most humble and dutiful Subjects who aimed at nothing and called God to witness they had nothing more in their eyes than the safety honour and welfare of His Majesty's Person and Government and yet these Men embrue their hands in His Bloud and break through all the Ties and Obligations these Oaths laid upon them in order to kill and take possession of what he had Now certainly my Beloved this thing ought mightily to be bewailed upon this account and God must needs be angry with that People who magnifie and vindicate not only the shedding of Righteous Bloud but the working their way to it
through Perjury and Perfidiousness through Breaches upon Promises reiterated and repeated again and again And therefore upon this account I recommend to you weeping and wailing because Perjury and Murder are great and crying sins II. Another Aggravation of this Murder is the Person that suffered and that was King Charles I. and here let us see whether he deserved such a barbarous death I am very far from thinking him a man in a state of Perfection and I do acknowledge there were Errors and Failures in his Government he came early to the Crown and therefore might be imposed upon but I hope every Man does not deserve to be knock'd o' th' Head for every particular slip of his life if so the best Kings that have Reigned would not have died natural deaths neither David nor Solomon neither Hezekiah nor Josiah nor any other Prince recorded for vertuous and very good men But however whatsoever his imperfections were in the beginning of his Reign I am sure before the Quarrel began with him he rectifyed them all and consented to remove all those things that were accounted grievous and indeed filled the Statute-Book with more Privileges than it does afford now for a succeeding Parliament took away some things then established which they in their great Wisdom thought neither fit for a King to grant nor People to enjoy The truth of it is this Great Person take him in all considerations deserved a far better Lot than he met withal and many of those that at first entertained hard thoughts of him and engaged against him upon Conversation and Acquaintance with him repented of what they had done and as they ever after bore a great esteem for him so in all their discourses afterwards represented him as one of the best of men they ever met withal particularly the Learned and Pious Mr. Vines who said to some Friends of mine That if ever there was a Solomon since Solomon it was Charles the I. And truly no wonder for certainly he was a Man endowed with as many Vertues and Graces as most Princes that ever sate upon a Throne His Devotions in the way of the Church of England were constant and regular his Discourses pithy and profitable for he was a man of great Parts and admirable Improvements his Behaviour was affable and courteous and so long as he was able possessed of his own Inheritance he was greatly Charitable and ready to lend his helping hand in promoting any publick Good which I could make out by many Instances further his Chastity considering the Temptations he as a King might be supposed to be under is scarce to be parallel'd and his Temperance acknowledged by all that were about him his Patience was in some sort like that of his great Master 's the Holy Jesus and tho he met with as great affronts and indignities as ever Man did that wore a Crown yet his very Enemies confessed that they could not throw him into a Passion nor ruffle him so far as to break out into undecent and angry Reflections how he behaved himself at his Tryal and immediately before his Death and at the hour of Death it self pray search the History and you will be satisfied that he was acted by a more than ordinary Divine Spirit one instance I cannot omit and that is when he was going through the Park towards the Scaffold with a Guard about him he spoke to Two Persons that did more immediately attend him that they would go faster saying That he now went before them to strive for an Heavenly Crown with less sollicitude than he had oftentimes bid his Souldiers to fight for an Earthly Diadem and how he went out of the World with a clear Soul without the least revenge but praving forgiveness for his Enemies you may find in the True Account of the passages at his Death And pray my Beloved what Cause was there now for this Great and Good Man's Murder Yes say some wicked Men he was a Tyrant and a Papist A Tyrant that is strange that gave to his People all they could reasonably ask and frankly offered to consent to any thing that did not strip him of his Kingship and that was consistent with his Honour and Conscience If such a Man be a Tyrant then You and I must all of us change our Notions of things and call Good Evil and Evil Good And as for the Imputation of Popery there is no Man that reads his History with an unprejudiced Mind can believe the least inclination to it if Living and Dying in perfect Communion with the most excellent Church in the World if offering to do any thing that might preserve and support the Protestant Religion be arguments of a Papist then I must confess the Imputation is just but what Man of the Church of England is not a Papist at this rate But thanks be to God as he refuted this Reflection by the whole Series of his Life and by his solemn Protestation at his Death when he was just going to give an account to God so I think the Members of this Church have Preach'd Printed and said enough in the late Reign for ever to silence and shame this Reflection and Imputation out of the World So that hitherto we find no cause of Death in him at all even if by the Laws of the Land he had been rightly tryed by a just Power that had as just an Authority to bring him to an Hearing and Tryal and therefore this is a great aggravation of his Death that a Man of Innocence and Goodness a Man of Virtue and Piety a Man indeed of a most Exemplary Life should be thus Butcher'd and that by those who had no more Authority to do it than you have to fall a cutting one anothers Throats as soon as this Sermon is ended And therefore upon this score This Death ought to be bewailed and there is great reason for the observing This Day in order to prevent the Judgments that may come upon us for shedding and for the vindicating the shedding of this Innocent Bloud III. Another Aggravation of this Murder is the Consequences of it Alas after the Sacrifice of this great Person Nobles fell by their bloudy hands and the best Families were either Banished or Imprisoned and their Estates Confiscated a bloudy War with Scotland was commenc'd and that free Nation brought into a perfect slavery and that which was a thing of deplorable consequence this Good Man's Children were Banished to seek their Bread in strange Countreys from whence proceeded the Miseries especially of the last Reign and therefore those Men that flye in the face of the Two last Kings should do well to consider where they were forcibly bred and how they came to be bred there who sent them out of their own Countrey and exposed them to live upon the Bounty of Popish Princes if King Charles the First had lived out his time they no doubt had been bred up in the strictest way in the Protestant